Critical Review by Stephen Wall

In the following review of a 2000 staging of Henry IV, Part 1 at The Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, Wall notes that this intimate venue lent itself more to the subtleties of Desmond Barrit's Falstaff than to the volubility of David Troughton's Henry IV or Adam Levy's energetic Hotspur.

What sort of stage do Shakespeare's Histories need? When the RSC moved into the Barbican in 1982, Trevor Nunn directed Henry IV as an elaborate demonstration of the new theatre's physical possibilities, with three-storey structures like Dickensian warrens giving way to deep open space for the battle scenes. Of the four history plays offered at Stratford this summer, only Henry V is to be given in the main house, Richard II and both parts of Henry IV being diverted to its...